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DOWNTIME
Adrenaline Adventures
Escape the office and get your heart pumping with these local high-octane experiences.
(clockwise from above right): Pursue the checkered flag at Grand Prix; climb a mountain (or at least feel like you have) at The Rock Club; reach Ncruising altitude thanks to Performance Flight
New York City may never sleep, but, in Westchester, we rarely rest when we’re awake. And while we put most of that energy towards our careers, all work and no play (especially when that work is done sitting behind a desk) can lead to some serious cabin fever. Here are several local opportunities to parole yourself from the office, enjoy a much-needed change of scenery, and get your adrenaline fix in the process.
FLY AN AIRPLANE
Performance Flight, West Harrison
ou ready to take off?” asked our instructor, John, a com-
mercial pilot with thousands of hours of flight time under
left hand on the steering stick,
air traffic control crackling in
my headphones. “Now, get it
up to a hundred percent.” And
then it happened. Just like every
Boeing 747 I had ever ridden,
we had liftoff—rising into the
sky as the ground miniaturized
below. “Wow. Simply wow!” I
said. Full disclosure: John had
a parallel setup to me, à la a
driver’s ed car, so he did some
(okay, most) of the work. And
once in flight, we turned much
of the work over to the auto-
pilot—but such is life for a pilot these days, and hey, at least you get to look out the window for a bit and take in the County from above. Around 20 minutes later, we landed in Poughkeepsie. “That was pretty amazing,” I said to myself. But darned if I didn’t forget to start a sentence with, “This is your captain speaking.” Well, there was always the flight back.
DRIVE A RACECAR
e drive a lot around here—which puts temptation at our
doorstep every day. There’s no shame in admitting you’ve found yourself on an empty, straight, smoothly paved I-287 late at night and felt the urge to accelerate. Better option: Drive, safely, to Monticello Motor Club. The club is, first, a private
98
“Y
Fear factor: High. Then low. The owner of the company actually got over his fear
of flying by training to be a pilot.
his belt. I had none. So how was I taking off? The closest I had been to a pilot’s seat was when the captain of a Pan Am jet I flew in 20 years ago gave me a five-second “tour” of the cockpit. But there was no turning back. We were on the freaking runway. I had a few things going for me, though. I was sitting in a $700,000 Cirrus airplane stunningly outfitted with two state-of-the-art Garmin computer screens right out of the Starship Enterprise. On them were maps of the airport and surrounding area, and lots of colorful numbers and shapes I didn’t quite get (“Keep the purple arrow next to the white arrow”—or something like that—John told me. Just like the world’s best video game, I thought). Above me, John explained, was a parachute. “You mean for each of us?” I asked. “No, for the plane.” That’s right, if anything went wrong, the plane would gen- tly float to the ground. Finally, I had John and his calming British accent. “Put your right hand here,” he explained, pointing to a handle in the middle of the plane, “and start to give it more power.” The plane rolled forward. “Get it to 60 percent.” I did as told, my
onticello Motor Club, Monticello, NY
MW
We left saying: “That’s right, I’m telling everyone I know I just flew an airplane.”
Bring a friend: For training, not so much, but you’ll have plenty of time to fly them around.
Just do it: performanceflight. com, (914) 397-1444
Q2 2013